The United States’ missile defense system will never work — which is why we’re spending more money on it

For almost 20 years, the United States has poured money into developing a missile defense system that would be capable of shooting down ICBMs and cruise missiles before they impact their launch targets. Despite the effort, the system has never worked. Last month, the General Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program slamming multiple aspects of the program’s design, administration, and field tests.

Despite these failures and problems, the House voted this week to spend an extra $20 million on developing an East Coast deployment of the GMD, while the Army has deployed multiple interceptors to Alaska and plans to order more. The total program cost through 2017 is estimated at $40 billion.

The problem is, this is a missile system has never been tested against an intercontinental ballistic missile (the major type of threat it’s supposed to defend against) and has only demonstrated, in the words of the Pentagon’s Director Operational Test and Evaluation report, “a limited capability against a simple threat.” That language has been used to describe the situation since 2003.

In plain English, this is the worst kind of boondoggle — an expensive, protracted program that consumes resources chasing a goal that might be impossible. Yet other countries, like Israel, have successfully deployed a missile defense system. So what’s wrong with the United States’ program?

A vastly different threat

Iron Dome is an anti-missile system developed by Israel to defend against Grad and Qassam rockets fired by insurgents and terrorist groups. These rockets have a typical velocity of about 675 meters per second, or approximately 0.4 miles per second. An ICBM, in contrast, has a velocity of 2.5 miles per second in boost phase and a terminal-phase velocity of around 4.3 miles per second.

Hitting an ICBM with an anti-ICBM has been likened to hitting a bullet with a bullet. Considering that the fastest bullets have a muzzle velocity of about 0.76 miles per second, one could argue that the Israeli Iron Dome system does hit a bullet with a bullet. Trying to hit an ICBM with a GMD-fired missile is an order of magnitude faster than that.

There are three phases during which we could plausibly target an ICBM — the boost phase (initial rocket launch and climb), the midcourse phase (while the ICBM is in sub-orbital flight), and the reentry phase (which is when the ICBM is driving back into the atmosphere towards its target). The boost phase is theoretically easy to target, but requires close proximity, an extremely fast launch cycle, and an insane amount of acceleration — remember, you’re trying to catch a good-sized rocket headed for Low Earth Orbit within 60-300 seconds. The re-entry phase is a poor option because the missile is already on-target — blowing up a nuclear or chemical rocket might just drop the warhead slightly outside of town as opposed to on the city center. That leaves the midcourse phase, which is the preferred target point.

All available evidence, however, suggests that it’s extremely easy for the ICBM to launch countermeasures that would drastically reduce the chances of the anti-ICBM missile from effectively locking on target. IO9 has a rundown of the countermeasure options, and they aren’t pretty.

Why anti-ICBM missile defense can’t work

The fundamental issue with any anti-ICBM missile system is that it’s going to cost orders of magnitude more money to develop an effective interception system than it does to throw more ICBMs at the target. One of the reasons Israel’s Iron Dome system works is because the insurgents it defends against can’t hurl thousands of missiles into Israeli airspace in a matter of minutes. Even so, it’s more of a psychological protective measure than an effective one.

In our case, the US has avoided any such tests of capability and confined itself to smaller, simpler tests against much slower targets — but it continues to build and deploy interceptors like the CE-II, which has never had a successful test. (EKV stands for Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle). When the GAO went to the DoD for additional data on the status of the program, the DoD was unwilling to share details on its own ongoing evaluations and will continue to deploy vehicles with an unproven capability.

Multiple government agencies have issued scathing reports on the mismanagement of the Missile Defense Agency, noting that the organization had proposed no methods of remedying the massive faults. But in lieu of effective solutions, Congress is happy to just spend more money on the broken ones — without even requiring the agencies in question to provide an accounting of how they’ll fix the problems in the future.

Tagged In

I vote for forget this paranoia (nobody is interested in a nuclear war) and dedicate the money on the people and grow the economy.

Fritters

“nobody is interested in a nuclear war”

Except for North Korea.

Phobos

and Iran, so Israel won’t push them around and tell their big brother U.S to do their dirty work.

iron_dinges

Only to join the MADness and prevent SK and US from their yearly naval exercises in the region.

wq

Funny statement, since the US is the only country to have actually used such weapons and repeatedly threatened to use them later.

Marc Guillot

North Korea (or Iran) doesn’t have the capability to achieve the US with nuclear missiles. They don’t need it, they have a huge city (Seoul) at reach of traditional artillery.

There is no need to keep burning billions of dollar on such stupid program.

Donk970

There’s a simple solution for N Korea. Tell them in simple language that if they launch a nuc at us we will turn them into a big glowing hole in the ground. Same for the middle east.

Simon

Why don’t you read up on your own country’s shameful history before criticising others.

sadfdsaf

Your just butthurt.

Simon

I’m pretty sure the post implied “no sane person”.

Besides, the United States broke the terms of the Korean Armistice Agreement that prohibited the build-up of weapons, including nuclear, on the Korean peninsula so they have no one to blame for North Korea retaliating than themselves, lest they be complete hypocrites.

But hey, US foreign policy and “hypocrite” go pretty much hand in hand. That is to lie, cheat, steal and murder (not even the innocent are safe since they’re considered “collateral damage”) by any means necessary to serve US imperialism.

Nelson Yang

Another US-hatred try to use political rhetoric to persuade people how evil those “imperialism” ?

Why you didnt mention that actually NK announcements to withdraw from the armistice agreement at least 6 times since 1994. NK aggressively provoke the conflict in 2013 peninisula crisis by bombard the civilian area of SK territory.

Every time the six-parties talk was end in similar agreement content: SK provide food, energy aids for exchange NK’s withdraw of WMD development in paper. After that the King’s dynasty just throw agreement away, continue what their nuclear plan and repeat this farce again and again.

US is not on high-ground since it’s arrogant foreign policy in these decades for sure. But defending an absolute monarchy that use fabricated truth to mind control its people, and bullies the other nation with WMD doesn’t make you looks better than any “hypocrite” u claimed.

cedrikt2015

USA make anti-missile defense to destroy the nukes of other countries who launch nukes at them in order to destroy USA.
Yeah that sounds really evil, too bad if you try to nuke USA and they end up nuking themselves, that’s their problem.
Shit happens, USA has defended itself and it’s their right to do so.
They’ve got guts to call USA evil when it’s a technology used in order to destroy the nukes they are throwing in direction of USA to destroy it. USA has the right to do it and they will do it.

If USA was really evil like they say, North-Korea wouldn’t be here to say that they are ready to nuke USA.

USA would have solved their fucking problem already and if China complained they would have been second.

USA is not so bad if you think about it, perhaps too tolerant towards people who has the ideology that says ALL AMERICANS should die.

cedrikt2015

Let me think, it never worked and it’s a useless project but they just put $40 000 000 000US extra in there. That sounds like the truth….
Well, let me guess, US National Defense isn’t telling us the Truth. No, really?? Since when would they keep the true state of their military power secret? I mean, that doesn’t make any sense…
WOW I made such a huge discovery… I deserve the Nobel Peace Prize now.

Adrian

….what you read is what you know, what about what you don’t know? there could be a lot of reasons I would lie and tell you a specific weapon system doesn’t work….

Bob Douglass

The whole point of MAD is that the other side has to know what you have (even if it doesn’t really work yet). It would be absolutely retarded to say our missile defense system doesn’t work when it really does. What would be the point of that?

Pray Hard

And Muslims.

Chuxk

We should just surprise nuke everybody one morning. Surprise!

cedrikt2015

Anti-Missile defense doesn’t work but we still spend more money on it, it really sounds legit.
Problem is, why should we use nukes?
We can destroy the ones of our enemies over their territory and show the world we are not there to destroy the planet but to defend ourselves.
North-Korea can try, but they will bite the dust faster than they say Dear Leader.

Zunalter

:) Oh alright…

Though, on the other hand, you only need to get 1 nuclear power to be interested in nuclear war once ;)

iron_dinges

We had one nuclear power performing nuclear war once, the difference being at the time it was the only nuclear power.

VirtualMark

Yes, it’s called MAD. A nuclear war would guarantee to wipe out a large percentage of the planet, and make life very hard for the survivors. I can’t imagine anyone wanting that scenario.

cedrikt2015

That is not true anymore.

VirtualMark

Are you attempting to open a conversation with me. If so, perhaps you should try writing more than one line, perhaps provide reasons for your thinking.

I’m guessing that you’re probably referring to the US build up of nuclear weaponry, that is now vastly superior to Russia. It’s now thought that the US could destroy Russia’s entire cache of nukes before they’d know what hit them.

However, it would still be an extremely risky venture, and one miss could result in some nasty retaliation. MAD isn’t gone yet, it’s definitely still viable.

johnybizzaro

Failure beget failure. Someone with B+lls need to stop this failed deployment. Do the hard yards and test the stupid system and work on getting the cost down. Everyone knows it does not work. No use kidding anyone. As usual Obama won’t stand up to the congress and push for working solution rather then just garbage.
Garbage in garbage out.

This is easy and cheap to fix really, at the level of tech we have now. Low orbit, fast launch drones outfitted with several types of counter measures. You could have them enmasse too and controlled from several different monitoring locations. Of course, this will actually work and cost a hell of a lot less so they have no excuse to get more funds to divert to there own pockets. Follow the money, get your answers.

Joel Hruska

I assume you mean drones launched from satellites or something similar? It’s not that simple. The drone would still have to carry enough fuel to reposition itself to hit the ICBM’s trajectory *or* the US would have to seed the entire planet with a sufficient density of drone satellites to guarantee we could hit anything coming in from anywhere.

Changing trajectory in space is exceedingly difficult (one reason Columbia couldn’t have rendezvoused with the ISS after its foam block strike because it didn’t carry enough fuel to change its delta-v by a sufficient amount.

The US could simplify the situation by only deploying satellites in geostationary orbits above the US itself, but that would mean destroying ICBMs or other missiles as they were on inbound approach, possibly contaminating / irradiating home soil.

dc

That’s basically what they suggested. Clusters of ABMs over the Soviet Union with still to be developed lasers in space to shoot down ICBMs from other sources.

Joel Hruska

“still to be developed lasers in space”

That’s always going to be the sticking point. Takes a lot of power to generate a laser. Brilliant pebbles was actually better in that regard (tungsten warheads fired from space has the advantage of simplicity.

This is easy and cheap to fix really, at the level of tech we have now. Low orbit, fast launch drones outfitted with several types of counter measures. You could have them enmasse too and controlled from several different monitoring locations. Of course, this will actually work and cost a hell of a lot less so they have no excuse to get more funds to divert to there own pockets. Follow the money, get your answers.

Momo

You have two flaws in your argument:
1) In addition to the Iron Dome, Israel has the Arrow II Anti-ICBM system developed jointly with the US and another Block 3 itteration currently in development. Block 3 will be able to intercept ICBMs outside of the atmosphere. Block 2 has already been test prove (Block 3 isn’t in the testing phase yet).

2) The various terrorist organizations in the Gaza strip can, and already launched in previous conflicts, dozens and hunderds of rockets towards the Southern/Central part of Israel in a matter of hours. Granted it’s not minutes, but that is enough to challenge any anti-missle defense system. The Iron Dome system works by screening out the rockets and predicting where they would hit. If the impact zone is inside the city, the system will send an interceptor; if not than the system will not send one. Simple principal, but at large rocket volumes the accuracy drops as seen in Operation Pillar of Defense and other incidents in-between Operation Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense and later.

Joel Hruska

The Arrow II is an anti ballistic missile system, not an ICBM defense. More here.

Arrow III will be an exoatmospheric interceptor aimed at destroying MIRV-ICBM at space before reentry. Contrary to what has been posted, it has already been successfully tested twice (systems and interceptor vehicle, interception will be tested later this year/next year).

I can post links but I don’t know if that’s accepted here, but these can be easily found.

Side note, Arrow II can already intercept salvos of MRBMs.

dc

it really depends, it “might” work some time (but probably not 100 percent) if you are in Israel and shooting down a missile fired from Iran, assuming that you can detect the launch quickly enough. From what I’ve read on the ABM program, if you are close to the ICBM (relatively) and fire at it while it is still speeding up, going into space, you have a chance of shooting it down. If the same missile were fired from say Siberia or the United States and your ABM was in Israel, then forget about it. I’m not suggesting that the US would fire a missile at Israel just trying to explain what the US would be looking at firing at an ICBM launched in Russia.

The Brilliant Pebbles program the US was developing up until 1994 was the only way to counter those type of missiles, unless we come up with a laser that will do it.

Joel Hruska

Demonstrating a missile that can reach its target envelope and a missile that can reliably *kill* the incoming missile while its still in suborbital flight are not the same thing.

It looks as though Arrow-III also uses an entirely different design for its vehicle than the American system. None of our intercept tests since 2008 have actually intercepted the target and the actual interception rate is 47%. None of the intercepted targets have used countermeasures of any sort.

Nadav

i’d like to add that I myself have been a witness to interceptions of dozens of rockets in a matter of minutes by Iron Dome.

To think they could have fell on my head!

cedrikt2015

No, IT DOESN’T work LOL

cedrikt2015

Isreal Iron Dome has a efficiency percentage of close to 99%.

What a fail project!

Jucifer

Actually, it is closer to 5% as tested by MIT researchers who helped to build similar systems for the U.S.

massau

damn it miles and meters mixed again “grabing the calculator”.

also couldnt they build a fallout vault like system for 40 billion dollar.

Asdf Ghjk

Erm, Aegis BMD? As far as I know, it was successful the last few tries.

Joel Hruska

Don’t confuse a ballistic missile defense system with an ICBM missile defense system. The GMD is explicitly supposed to defend against ICBMs.

Short-range interception of what are colloquially called “cruise missiles” is an entirely different (though still difficult) problem.

713Cali

I must be confused as I was sure the ‘BM’ in ‘ICBM’ referred to Ballistic Missiles.
…or do you mean to suggest the ‘IC’ (inter-Continental) somehow changes this calculus?
[Cruise missiles are not ballistic missiles as they are powered to the target site; unlike a ballistic missile {shockingly as the name would suggest} which falls unpowered to its target]

Joel Hruska

I used the wrong term earlier. The heavy-hitting ICBMs that the GMD supposedly defends against are missiles that spend a significant amount of time in suborbital flight, approach at extremely high velocity, and are launched from significant distances.

This gets fuzzy on the edges. A high-end IRBM and a low-end ICBM are very close to the same thing. The United States doesn’t face much of a threat from anything *but* ICBMs, but the difficulty of intercepting missiles at such velocities and the ease of deploying countermeasures tilts the scales against us.

Damon

And if we ever need it, the scales are already tilted against us irreversibly . There are hundreds of missiles pointed at the US from several countries, Even if we can knock dozens out of the sky, we will have already sent our own barrage of doom out and the dozens that get through both directions will end Human civilization on earth as we know it. At this point, an enemy would pop the bombs in space and EMP us back to the stone ages and do nearly as much damage.

Joel Hruska

Don’t confuse a ballistic missile defense system with an ICBM missile defense system. The GMD is explicitly supposed to defend against ICBMs.

Short-range interception of what are colloquially called “cruise missiles” is an entirely different (though still difficult) problem.

Ivor O’Connor

They spend this money because it keeps people employed in their districts. It is a jobs program. One step up from changing roundabouts to stop lights that need constant repair to “stimulate” the economy. All of this though is a symptom of a larger problem. The larger problem being the dollar is the planets main currency and it is under the thumb of American politicians. The politicians do not need to balance the budget. They print more as they need it. If however the world’s currency became the bitcoin then the politicians would care. Programs like these would never get anything more than a chuckle. A chuckle of pity for money so foolishly wasted.

sferrin

Loosen the tinfoil.

Ivor O’Connor

I don’t believe the world is out to bomb us. Despite what we do to other nations. People, except for politicians, are usually good. So we don’t need this or the thousands of other work projects that make our military about twice the size of all other combatants in the world combined. Though it is sort of turning to us versus the world.

Bonanzadrvr

What do you say now given the situation in Israel…Besides, weapons (jobs programs) push then envelope of multiple technologies while employing thousands of engineers and technicians. As long as the money stays within our borders, it is part of a watershed that flows back into our economy. How do you feel about the alphabet soup of welfare agencies that subsidize the millions of births of bastard children?

http://bienestarmutuo.org Elisha Bentzi

Humans demostration of mind of the cave, Hey you I have a bigger stick that you!. The peolple get out of jobs, the children have hungry, and this stupid humans playing war games of the cave. All deserve extintion like the dinosaurs.

sferrin

Guess which ones will go first. Yep, the ones who don’t defend themselves.

http://bienestarmutuo.org Elisha Bentzi

The times have changed. This is the year 2014 not the old wild west. This time the only survivors will be, the humans that can work together. ¿What make the human superior over dinosaurs? force? speed? size? . the answer is INTELLIGENCE. This time is emphatic intelligence.

sferrin

Hey, I know how we could make an effective missile defense. Let’s quit. Idiots. This article is yet another shining example of why the internet is making us stupider.

Joel Hruska

There is a difference between backing research and development of capabilities and deploying actual hardware that has proven ineffective even in limited testing.

If the military wanted to continue testing a missile defense, I’m fine with that. Deploying interceptors that it agrees are untested and unready, because it needs to look like its doing something useful? Not so great.

Stacey Bright

Obviously the most effective means of testing the system means launching an ICBM (sans payload) to test against. Except how do you launch what looks and acts like an ICBM, and not manage freak out your nearest maybe not so friendly nuclear super-power?

rocksmith99

Ballistic missiles are tested at least once a year by each of the five major nuclear powers. (Well, maybe Britain and China test less frequently). Launches are announced to the world, and targeted towards the deep ocean.

sferrin

Hey, I know how we could make an effective missile defense. Let’s quit. Idiots. This article is yet another shining example of why the internet is making us stupider.

http://www.iDoiDevices.com/ Jason Yeaman

The Aegis BMD is fielded, operational and proven.

Just because the Army can’t get a kinetic exoatmospheric intercept doesn’t negate the Navy’s record of doing it over and over and over again.

hatfey

Aegis is a boondoggle . Go figure

PtolemyWasWrong

Based on this article’s logic, the Great Society, War on Poverty and New Deal should have been shuttered long ago, before TRILLIONS of dollars were wasted, and are still being wasted. Go figure.

Joel Hruska

….That is an utterly ridiculous and untrue assertion.

We have spent $40B to date developing a missile system that has delivered a 47% kill rate against simple tests that did not accurately model the scope or challenge of shooting down an ICBM, much less an ICBM that could deploy any sort of counter-measures.

The War on Poverty and the New Deal have helped millions of Americans. Poverty rates among the elderly were slashed by 50%. We can talk about whether or not that’s “good enough,” or if funds are well-spent, but there is no denying that these programs directly helped a huge chunk of the American people.

In contrast, the Army is pushing ahead with deploying missiles before it’s tested them to work out the kinks. It’s building out deployments of these systems despite the fact that we haven’t had a successful test since 2008. It’s building them out despite the fact that military advisers have been advising the government for a DECADE that the radar systems aren’t good enough, the countermeasure capabilities don’t exist, and the entire program is patched together on hope and no proof of actual functionality.

If the government had a cogent, determined plan to resolve these issues I’d feel differently. Instead, it plans to push ahead with deployments while admitting to the GAO that it cannot adequately adjust for further design changes that may be required.

PtolemyWasWrong

The arithmetic speaks:
Social Security – roughly 4.7 trillions of $ in surplus payments gone (completely unaccounted for); in their place are trillions in US Government IOUs and a looming insolvency that has been vastly accelerated by long-term unemployment recipients pushed onto SS disability rolls. In short, just another massive pyramid scheme about to go bust. It’s so bad, politicians are floating the idea that, regardless of how much you paid into SS and Medicare, if your income exceeds a certain amount, you are not entitled to your own money. Any private company that tried that would be shut down and its directors imprisoned. If this is success, what does failure look like?
Medicare: Payments have vastly exceeded inflows for years; this expects to be defunct in just a handful of years. Doctors throughout the US are waking up to the anemic reimbursement rates, with even lesser rates to follow, and converting to practices that do not use insurance at all. If this is success, what does failure look like?
Great Society: This has grown into a veritable army of organizations that exist solely to sign people up for benefits so they can skim 10%. If this is success, what does failure look like?
Has poverty lessened? Where are the metrics that prove this?

Obviously the number of people in poverty shot up in 2010 because of the recession, the numbers have come down somewhat since.

As I said: We can discuss the effectiveness and tax structures used to achieve these ends, as well as the efficiency of the methods, but the impacts have been considerable.

Regardless of where you stand on these programs, they are incomparable to a missile defense shield.

PtolemyWasWrong

If I understand your SS argument, you’re saying: “It doesn’t matter that over $4,700,000,000 is unaccounted for, what matters is that the thieves spent some of the money like they were supposed to, and we’re going to ignore the huge role of the individual stock market investor, the incredible growth in private pension plans and the rise of women in the workforce in alleviating poverty.” In short, it could only have been produced by an organization with an incredibly biased view against capitalism and private wealth – in short, the EPI.
If I understand your poverty chart correctly, it states that approximately the same percentage of people are now in poverty as there were when the program began in 1965. In what metric system is this considered a success? Or is failure now considered a success, as long as it perpetuates dependency?
BTW, since race has always been self-reported, metrics based on it are primarily, at root, fiction. They’re just labels that people use to mess with the pollsters.
They’re the perfect metaphor for a ‘missile defense shield’ – moving goalposts, political and institutional corruption throughout the proposal, development, testing and fulfillment stages, and little, if any, coherent studies of what worked.

The beast is here to stay – individual liberty is endangered.

Phobos

Individual liberty is endangered, I think it has been in danger for a while that it matters little now.

Ivor O’Connor

When SS fails to take in more per year than it pays out they will obviously change the rules again. Forget the trillions politicians took from SS and then spent saying they would repay back it. My question is do you think technology will ever make it into an honest system?

The second question is about Ptolemy. What was he wrong about? It seems he was very useful for many centuries in the same way as Newton and many others. Someday when we understand dark energy and dark matter we’ll probably be able to revise most of our current wrong but useful ideas on physics…

PtolemyWasWrong

Ptolemy was wrong about the Earth being the center of the known
Universe, around which all celestial bodies rotated. But he did have mathematical models that he and his cohorts would tweak whenever a new celestial body was detected. Kinda reminds one of ‘AGW’ or it’s new moniker, ‘Climate Change’. The parallels between the Ptolemaists and the model-pushing extremists behind AGW are astounding, and make one think that Ptolemy has found another place for his soul.

Ivor O’Connor

Ok, then Ptolemy was and is about what I thought. He did a lot of great work and his voluminous tables were used for hundreds of years. There wasn’t anything better at the time and he did a pretty good job. I doubt he considered himself a fraud and he helped immeasurably.

Anyways the AGW stuff is still up in the air. They seem to think it’s obvious and that if 97% of the scientist believe it then it must be fact. Those arguments are so pathetic they might as well say they are clueless. However why rock the boat and risk our climate when we have better and more economical solutions than fossil and nuclear that does not risk our climate?

dc

Interestingly the people behind the ABM system studied it in depth back in the 70s/80s and stated then that it would not work. Spend a hour or two watching early 80s Star Wars, as in the defense screen and not the movies, video on youtube. You can find a lot of old films made by the very same defense contractors who now make the ABM system. They stated then that ground based missiles can not stop an ICBM and should only be used as backup for a space based system.

Space based ABMs do work, or could anyway. Shoot missiles going up from above, fire said ABMs in a vacuum, intercept the ICBM in the vacuum of space, all of that adds up to a fairly reliable, albeit expensive system. Without atmosphere to slow down and alter the path of your missile, the ABM can function with a high probability of success, especially since it can fire while the ICBM is moving up towards it. Also in space the ABM can speed up very quickly to catch and even surpass the speed of the ICBM (which has used most of its fuel just reaching high earth orbit).

The ground based missiles just can’t work, at least not with chemical rockets fired from the other side of the planet. By the time you track and fire, the ICBM has already reached such an altitude and speed that shooting it down is impossible.

ABM can work, but you need an effective strategy and holding programs accountable through testing. You also need continous breakthroughs in technology, like lasers…

The problem is that plenty of companies and bought off politicians are willing to waste billions of dollars on worthless ineffective crap, if they can get away with it.

Lastly, you are not going to stop a country like Russia. They will perpetually counter whatever new system you put out. The point of ABM defense is against less technology advanced, hostile states like North Korea, and smaller threats. The author and others missed this point.

Joel Hruska

Not at all. I completely understand this point.

Let me reiterate. The United States has not, in nearly 20 years of development, tested its GMD system against an actual ICBM of the sort NK might launch. It has no plans to do so.

Instead, the Army is building out more launchers and missiles despite the fact that the system does not and has not conformed to anything like the necessary requirements.

If the government’s response was “We’re going to invest in R&D and full-throttle testing until we know the system can perform as it must in order to safeguard America,” I might think it a waste of money, but I wouldn’t call the program a failure.

SOEJINN

I disagree, but in terms of scope. The Aegis BMD, for example, has had successful tests (last year at that) and is widely considered capable of knocking out primitive long range North Korean missiles or defending small areas. Google or YouTube tests and videos. However, in terms of ABM defense in a WW3 scenario and/or national defense against multiple missles aimed at non-military targets, this is where I agree with your sentiment. ABM still has a long way to go, and money should be aligned with positive test results.

hatfey

dude aegis is a boondoggle .

David Carlson

Ha ha. The Joint Strike Fighter is another huge debacle.

Shame your politicians into raising military pay and extending veteran benefits to further squander the DOD budget.

RH

I prefer the old 60’s to 70’s MAD (mutually assured destruction). You know I have the ability to destroy your country, I know you have the ability to destroy my country. This missile defense system would just tip the scale to one side. The problem isn’t some country like China, Russia, North Korea dropping bombs on the USA, it would be some rogue idiot with a suitcase bomb, or someone that pops a dirty bomb over a city or an EMP bomb over a city.

SOEJINN

MAD hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s still there. In fact, ABM capability adds to the effectiveness of MAD, by creating an uncertainty factor and making a 1st strike or sneak attack unattractive.

Daniel Revas

If a ton of money and years of failure meant giving up we never would have survived the MBT 1970 program and developed the M1.

Joel Hruska

We spent $303M on the MBT-70 program, which comes out to about $2 billion today. We’ve spent $40 billion on the GMD system to-date. Again, there are massive differences.

The MBT-70 tank was ahead of its time in multiple respects and served, ultimately, as a testbed for next-generation tank technology. The GMD system the US has developed shows no such promise and has demonstrated no such capability.

Unlike a tank, which is designed to serve a great many complex roles in a military, an anti-ICBM missile intercept has one job — intercept missiles.

Daniel Revas

You took the post too literally, it wasn’t an apple to apple comparison, but conceptually it is a valid example of the often dysfunctional spending that ultimately turns out some of our best combat systems. My knowledge of the MBT-70 Program didn’t come from Google, I have a little more first hand knowledge of the Program.The money flushed down the drain on the MBT-70 Program had the one benefit of developing new technologies in Tank design, that is true, but it actually failed because it became too complex, and it was never meant to be a test bed. It was supposed to produce the Army’s next generation MBT to replace the M60 series. The disparity between U.S Tanks and their Soviet counterparts was growing obscene. I know, I was training Tankers on the issues they would face fighting Soviet Tanks with their M60A2’s and A’3’s. We really were fortunate that no major conflict broke out before the Abrams was ready to go. You also didn’t enumerate the additional costs required to develop and produce the M1 which had substantial design differences. Oh, and the role of the MBT in Modern Warfare is not complex at all, its primary purpose is to destroy other Tanks and Light Armored Vehicles with the occasional Bunker busting duties, there is a reason that in Iraq and Afghanistan most of the few Tanks we deployed to those conflicts stayed in the Motor Pool. (After the defeat of Iraq’s conventional forces.)

BTW, when the M1 Abrams debuted publicly for the first time in front of the Media it got stuck in reverse and became an instant laughing stock in the Press. It was labeled as another Pentagon “White Elephant”. We know what happened after that. It became an unqualified success.

I had a friend who worked on the Sgt. York Program which had a development cost of almost $7 Billion, it was cancelled in 1985. Which if I did my Math correctly is $15.4 Billion in today’s dollars. The AAA system should have worked perfectly on paper, virtually every major component was from another proven system. It never worked correctly and was ultimately cancelled. As much as we would like to view Weapons Development as a precise Science, it often isn’t, as much as we would like it to be.

I’ve seen too much of Weapons Development and Deployment during my Military Career and in the years since to buy your conclusion that the ABM System now deployed will NEVER work. Technologies evolve, and ultimately fixes to an existing system may prove better in the long run than starting from scratch, and the goal is certainly worthwhile. Writing off $40 Billion spent to develop and deploy the System could be a big step backwards for something that we ultimately do need.

That’s my 2 cents, or maybe a quarter, you can take it or leave it as you like. I’ve only had a 45 year obsession with all things Military, in and out of the Service, what the Hell do I know anyway.

Cheers.

Joel Hruska

I’m not implying you know nothing or that your experience is anything but valuable. But I’d like to point out that when the original MBT-70 program was canceled and the M1 Abrahms grew out of that, it was because we continued to *evaluate* these programs.

The Army has openly admitted that the policy of building interceptors without first testing those interceptors to see if they can meet criteria will leave the entire system compromised if they encounter problems that cannot be fixed post-production.

We aren’t just deploying an untested system, we’re deploying an untested system that we can’t *fix.* And I believe that’s a fundamentally bad idea. It would’ve been a bad idea to put the untested MBT-70 in Germany in large quantities without ever conducting a wargame scenario or evaluating the tank in simulated combat conditions.

I admit, I’m dubious on the fundamental concept of the GMD, but I’m willing to be convinced by tests. What I’m not willing to do is say “Oh, sure, deploy this — but don’t even bother testing it against the class of threats it can defend against.”

Daniel Revas

I guess we differ on the issue of whether or not it can be “fixed”. I still have a few friends in the right places I should talk to before I make up my mind. Cutting your losses at $40 Billion is a tough pill to swallow though. If there is any hope of salvaging the System, they should. A working ABM System is worthwhile, especially as “Rouge Nations” gain the capability to build ICBM’s and develop nuclear capabilities.

If it truly can’t be fixed, yes they should cancel the Program. I’m afraid that it would be very difficult to convince Policy Makers to fund a new System from scratch if that turns out to be the case, even with “proven” technology. (As I noted, everything in the Sgt.York Program was “proven” technology.) If you scrap the current System, you will have created a huge number of skeptics on Capitol Hill that are looking to reap the benefits of the current “Peace Dividend” opportunity. Thor could descend from Asgard with the greatest Technology we’ve ever seen and in the current climate you probably couldn’t get the funding to build it. :)

I have lived through the the kind of Budget cuts that are currently being imposed on the Military 3 times now. The technological edge we have enjoyed at various times in the post WWII era has been crucial to staying the hand of our enemies, now is no different. When your Conventional Forces are too small in the face of numerically superior foes, technology makes a huge difference. If we are to protect ourselves in an age where more than our “traditional foes” will be able to rain nuclear weapons down on our shores, we better have the technology to defend ourselves, the Conventional Forces that would be required to take preemptive action are unlikely to be there going forward when you’re talking about less then half a million men under arms. When people see the 485,000 number, they have no idea how it breaks down between Combat and Support Forces. Real “Boots on the Ground” are going to be stretched thin going forward.

So Technology is going to have to fill huge gaps in our capabilities going forward, when funding for that becomes insufficient we might as well accept the inevitable decline in capability, and therefore American Security Interests and Influence that comes with it.

Cheers.

Joel Hruska

I’m really completely ok with that. I think it’s absurd that we spent more on military firepower than the next 12 countries on Earth combined (most of which are our allies.) I think it’s absurd that the USAF continues to throw money at the deeply troubled F-35, but wants to retire the extremely capable A-10.

I’m fundamentally dubious on most of the high-cost / low-reward programs that the military currently funds, from the DDG-1000 family to the F-35 to the GMD, not because I want America to be weak militarily, but because hundreds of billions spent on these programs collectively have produced so damn little in the way of effective results. Meanwhile the Army doesn’t even expect to field a comprehensive next-gen radio system until 2017.

For all the talk about “supporting our troops,” we tend to pour funds into high-tech boondoggles rather than practical realities. So you end up with situations where we have ample laser-guided precision munitions to fire at the Iraqis and Afghanis, but not nearly enough body armor or reinforced plating for Humvees to protect from IEDs. I’m not saying those precision munitions didn’t matter — but from the perspective of actually supporting the troops, they mattered less than basic protection.

Daniel Revas

Much of what you find maddening is a valid reaction to the dysfunctional POLICY decisions that too often infect the development and procurement process, and on the issue of the F-35 and the A-10, we agree. We had to buy my Son an ACOG when he deployed to Iraq ($1500) because even though he was a Battalion Scout, they didn’t have enough to go around. We also bought him better plates for his vest. We had to go significantly out of pocket during his deployment. Worth it obviously, he got home alive, but when military spending gets cut, the Soldiers feel it the most. Policy Makers have turf to protect and they do, there is no denying that. That’s why I described the process as dysfunctional, though it often works in spite of itself. Certainly it needs to work better.

I am disturbed though when I hear that quote about how much we spend on Defense vs. the rest of the world. As a former Intelligence Analyst, I can tell you that even within the Classified Assessments, we did not really know for sure how much China or Russia was spending. Like with the U.S., so much of Defense Spending takes place outside of the Services and may not show up so clearly in the ledgers. Cross-over spending for Military Projects can be easy to mask. More so in places like China and Russia. The U.S. is more transparent because we have significant oversight.

Finally, look at it this way: The measure of adequate Defense Spending isn’t really reflected in dollars and cents, it is reflected in the measure of the capability versus the requirements. We spend far too little on Transport, both Airborne and Seaborne, this has been a chronic problem since the end of the Vietnam War. We currently allocate no dedicated Air Assets to territorial defense, after 911 there were British aircraft flying Security Cap over New York. That reflects a major weakness.

I could go on and on, but what I would suggest is that the dollars spent are not the only, and perhaps not the best, measure of what is adequate for our national defense.

Been an interesting discussion. Cheers.

Joel Hruska

Sure, I can agree with that. It’s not *just* the amount of money we spend — it’s the amount of money we spend with what appear to be such limited returns. The DDG-1000 was supposed to be the backbone of the 21st century Navy with flexible mission options and a fast switch time. Now we’re going to build just three of them. So the costs of development that were going to be spread across 32 ships are now carried by 3, and we’re looking to extend the Arleigh Burke class until a future Navy vessel can be brought online.

It seems to me as though part of the problem is that we’ve swapped incremental but steady evolution for attempts to leap forward at great speed. The DDG-1000 and F-35 were significant leaps forward as originally conceived, but we bit off more than we could chew and might have been better served by rapid integration of moderate improvements at incremental cost, with a periodic “wrap up” design to implement newly developed technologies in a single craft *after* they were out of the prototype stage.

Daniel Revas

If you face the prospect of reduced Budgets and Manpower in the future, then yes there is a temptation to “go big”. It can cloud the thinking of those charged with charting strategy. The Russians are a prime example of the “incremental improvement” paradigm though, and technologically it typically left them behind, so they spent themselves into bankruptcy by trying to make it up with numbers.

There will always be failures, the history of Military research and procurement is littered with them, but you will never convince the Military Acquisition People to rely on essentially “unfinished” , in their minds, prototypes that can be updated with new technologies later. They will always want a finished product that exceeds the capability of its likely foe NOW, AND is capable of upgraded Weapons and Avionics packages later. The F-35 was actually supposed to be what you propose at it’s inception, and some would say that that is the problem. It is supposed to be a multi-role Aircraft designed to be adapted to specific mission requirements and act as a replacement for everything from the F-18 Super Hornet, to the Harrier, to the A-10. A single Aircraft solution as you are suggesting. The “huge leap” was getting one Plane to do everything we want the F-35 to do. Therein has been the problem with that approach as you note. Some of the essential technologies are not sufficiently mature and are causing problems. Still, given budgetary pressures, I doubt that they will shift course. The F-35 will be built and deployed. I think eventually it will prove to be an excellent aircraft. I can give you a long list of combat Aircraft that got off to a very rough start because of new technology, but proved to be excellent later. The F-111 comes immediately to mind.

It should also be noted that there have been some notable successes on the Military Technology front, such as the impending deployment of Laser Based Weapons on Navy Ships that have tremendous advantages over current Weapons Systems, and this will be amplified by the deployment of Rail Gun Systems with the first prototype being tested on a Navy Ship as early as 2016. It’s not all doom and gloom.

But hell, as my Wife, who was also an Analyst likes to say, “it’s complicated”.

Cheers.

iron_dinges

Interesting and educational read, I didn’t realise ICBMs travel quite so fast. A few dozen intercept-satellites positioned on different orbits seems to be the only realistic option.

Another idea – is it possible to destroy such a missile with a similar missile, simply detonated in close proximity? Assuming it can be tracked accurately from launch and flies high enough that a premature explosion won’t cause too much damage, just launch one of your own ICBMs to destroy it at some point in its path. This also has the advantage of costing the same amount as the missile instead of 10-100x as much.

Joel Hruska

Iron,

No. This is one of the common misconceptions.

An explosive detonation will only catch the missile in flight if the projectiles from detonation are traveling fast enough to catch up with the missile. So you can’t detonate beside or behind the target warhead; your fragments won’t catch the ICBM.

You can detonate in *front* of the warhead, but you would need an explosion that hurled a cloud of penetrators at a sufficient speed and density to actually take the warhead out, and it would have to be a shaped charge that flung them all in the same direction.

As far as I ‘m aware, this is sufficiently impractical that the decision was made to focus on direct hits.

rocksmith99

“a cloud of penetrators at a sufficient speed and density to actually take the warhead out”: well, an ABM intercept is by nature at higher-than-orbital closing speeds, and even a grain of sand would make a dent in the RV heatshield. I think that the real problem would be uniformly spreading something like ball bearings – even one hit would assure that the RV burns up on reentry.

Reasons why it isn’t done: I suppose that a 20 meter miss distance isn’t that different from a direct hit in this problem, and one would like to vapourize the warhead mid-way if possible instead of making it burn up over friendly territory.

And we are still talking about conventional explosives, anyway. What he suggested was more like jury-rigging a modern day Nike-Zeus by using a Minuteman on a counterfire trajectory. Sometimes I wonder whether that could work, actually… nuclear warheads have a vastly reduced effectiveness in space, true, but nuclear ABMs were proven technology forty years ago (the aforementioned Nike-Zeus, Spartan and soviet SH-11)

Of course this would still have the problem of discriminating decoys, AND would entail EMPing random countries over which the interception would occur – so, probably not.

Joel Hruska

Reading about Nike-Zeus, it appears one of the key problems is cost — it cost far more to build an ABM than it did to build an ICBM. High-atmosphere kill vehicles would blind ground radar. Then when MIRVs were invented, it sank the idea of an ABM.

So an exothermic kill vehicle that deploys pre-MIRV separation makes the most sense — but only if you can actually hit the target or whallop it with enough hard radiation to penetrate and disable.

The real-world usefulness seems fairly dubious to me.

rahuldey85

What about using the rail gun fitted to satellites?

Mirimon

rail gun, were it functional, could easily be considered a WMD.. which of course are prohibited in space.

wq

“Even so, it’s more of a psychological protective measure than an effective one.”

90% of rockets shot down sounds pretty effective to me.

Joel Hruska

We’re using different definitions of “effective.”

“In November 2012, during Operation Pillar of Defense, the Iron Dome’s effectiveness was estimated by Israeli officials at between 75 and 95 percent.[87] According to Israeli officials, of the approximately 1,000 missiles and rockets fired into Israel by Hamas from the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defense up to 17 November 2012, Iron Dome identified two thirds as not posing a threat and intercepted 90 percent of the remaining 300.[88] During this period the only Israeli casualties were three individuals killed in missile attacks after a malfunction of the Iron Dome system”

Iron Dome’s primary benefit, therefore, is psychological. Palestinian rockets are so terribly bad at killing people that the ID system *cannot* protect very many people from injury or death because (in absolute terms) not that many people are getting injured or killed to begin with.

SOEJINN

This is an odd assessment, in the face of clear statistical evidence of Iron Dome’s effectiveness. Iron Dome is a clear effective physical deterrent, not just a psychological one.

The sophistication of Palestinian rockets has been growing, not stable. Without Iron Dome, the effectiveness of Palestinian attacks would have arguably increased. Also, arbitrarily changing the criteria from effective interception to deaths caused by rocket attacks is dubious. Iron Dome’s interception effectiveness seems to break your position.

Joel Hruska

It’s not an odd assessment.

Vending machines kill six people a year.

I deploy an anti-vending machine-killing-people-device.

The next year, vending machines kill three people.

I trumpet the effectiveness of my solution. Everyone *feels* much safer. But the people feeling much safer were far more likely to die from a heart attack, a car wreck, cancer, or an entirely different source than they were to die from a vending machine falling on them.

Iron Dome is a system designed to make people FEEL safer. It cannot make very many people safer, because the number of people previously being threatened is very small.

VirtualMark

I don’t get why they would invest in a program that doesn’t work?

massau

i have a great idea lets just put so much space junk in space so ICMB’s are just useless, ah wait we are already doing that,

iron_dinges

It will take a *lot* of space junk to have even an insignificant chance of random collision.

massau

i don’t think it is that hard to create a space junk belt that splits the us from Russia but i don’t think you could use satellites anymore and they could still create a heavier ICBM that flies higher then this junk belt.

Jeff Vahrenkamp

To be fair, hitting a nuclear reentry vehicle won’t “just drop the warhead slightly outside of town as opposed to on the city center.” Nuclear weapons are pretty finicky as to how they work, and when you hit something the size of a large suit case with something else the size of a large suitcause traveling at relative speeds of 6-8 miles per second, the chances of a functioning nuclear weapon surviving are essentially zero, even if it was a glancing blow. At worst the warhead acts like a small dirty bomb, while it’s most likely just a uranium/lithium core that makes it to the ground. The main reason we don’t go after the reentry phase is that it is very short, and much harder to hit.

rocksmith99

Not harder to it: SPRINT managed it in the seventies. The problem is that reentry phase interception is a short-range affair, so a country the size of the US would need a preposterous number of ABMs. For Israel, they would make much more sense (and so, they are actually building them)

Jeff Vahrenkamp

I think the other problem is that for the US we’re all really thinking about russia in the back of our head, and by the reentry phase, we are dealing with MIRVs, so instead of one target you’ve got 10+, some of which are dummies. In fact the MIRV was developed as 1) an economical way to distribute total annihilation to a region with only one missile 2) Essentially neutralized the utility of end stage missile defense systems like Nike-Zeus. You are correct that we already had very efficient missile defense against whatever someone like North Korea could throw at us already.

MadisonHJ

Move along … These are not the anti-ICBMers you are looking for …

adamrussell

Instead of hitting the icbm could the deterrent instead use counter measures to mess with its targetting system?

rocksmith99

An ICBM has no targeting system to decoy: it files blindly to a point in space. That’s why it is a ballistic weapon.

ZePreem

It’s less about reality than it is perception …. plus does it really matter? I mean we won’t ever be invaded to the point our country doesn’t exist.

Bsta

Of course none of this ICBM defense matters much since someone could just launch one from a sub parked off the coast and hit before anyone would know what happened.

Bsta

launch a nuke, that is.

Bsta

launch a nuke, that is.

Jeff Watts

The author equates A difficult technical problem” with “The US missile Defense will never work”. This is a basic logical fallacy. Just because something is a difficult technical problem does not mean it’s insoluble.

Furthermore, it’s a problem that’s already been solved. Nuclear tipped anti-missiles can easily obtain a 100% kill rate on modern hardware. The system could still be easily overwhelmed with a catastrophic launch of 1,000’s of ICBM’s. The very act of destroying the first wave of missiles would blind your target acquisition to any follow on missiles using mid course correction. However, neither Russia nor the US maintain that number of weapons any longer.

The only reason, the US doesn’t have nuclear tipped ABM’s is because we signed various treaties disallowing them 40 years ago. However, you can assume that the current ABM’s have a warhead that can be replaced with a US nuclear warhead.

In the event of an impending strike, the non-nuclear warheads will be exchanged for the the nuclear variant. This doesn’t guarantee that every ICBM would be intercepted, but how many successful intercept would you need to cost justify it? What’s the value of one large American city? Certainly far more than the cost of the program so far. Hell, we spent $100 billion on repairing the damage in NYC from 9/11.

At this point the whole program is just cheap insurance.

J_kies

Jeff
You are correct as to the ‘logical fallacy’. You are incorrect as to the numbers of deliverable systems, the EMP and radar blinding issues re modern sensor systems and no treaty eliminated nuclear tipped ABMs as the Russians have those around Moscow today. The US doesn’t have nuclear tipped systems because a US law said we aren’t allowed to have or research them – blame Congress and the NDAA.

I think the problem with nuclear tipped missiles has to do with setting off nukes in LEO or inside the atmosphere.

J_kies

Joel;
Actually the ICBM intercept problem is far easier than the endo intercept problem: Guidance is the sail-boat collision problem, maintain constant angle off bow at continuously closing range. GMD class hit-to-kill was demonstrated on June 10, 1984. You are confusing the basis incompetence of the organization and approach with the inherent difficulty. Discrimination (RVs v everything else) is the hard part and to date, no GMD test has failed to discriminate.

On the other hand the 1999 NIE did not have a competent assessment of the difficulties of RV Penaids (countermeasures) so the discrimination problem isn’t impossible either. However if the team isn’t technically competent, attempting something harder technically than the Manhattan Program isn’t going to go well.

Joel Hruska

I will acknowledge that it’s possible a substantially different approach to the problem would yield substantially different results.

Mojo

Only 40 Billion? That’s a drop in the bucket compared to how much Obama has spent in the last five years…Let’s worry about more expensive things, like illegal immigrants, social security, etc. etc. etc.

Presidents have a modest impact on the economy at most. Deficit spending and national debt growth have a long rich history under both Republicans and Democrats.

Mojo

I mention Obama because he’s been the president for the last five years. The debt under him has gone from 9 Trillion to 17 Trillion – more than most of the previous presidents in the last 240+ years of the United States, yet this article seems to imply that spending a few billion is somehow a waste if it means a chance of better protecting our borders. And since you think it’s a personal attack on Obama, I agree with you – Bush 1 and 2, Clinton, and other fiscally liberal presidents, both Republican and Democrat, have spend us so far into the hole I doubt we will come out of it again. So why not throw a few billion at potentially improving our defenses?

SOEJINN

People are still missing the point. ICBM defense and BMD using missles wouldn’t stop an all out WW3 nuke attack. It would be overwhelmed by sheer number, outsmarted by decoys, or outmaneuvered by subs off the coast and missiles located in nearby countries. What you want is the ability to stop isolated incidents and rogue states like North Korea and Iran, or smaller groups. The scope of BMD (hitting missles with missles) will be limited to this until you bring in revolutionary technology like lasers and railguns. What you want is detection and destruction of ICBMs by lasers as soon as they were launched, then to use railguns to throw a massive amount of cheap projectiles to stop missiles from every “accurately” reaching their targets.

You have to spend money to get lasers and railguns advanced to the point that they can be used for BMD. Until then, you would use what you got, which is missile versus missile. BMD is best used to defend small areas and military assets, or deter because an enemy can’t be sure of success or is forced to spend excessive amounts of money trying to overwhelm your defense.

J_kies

SOEJINN –
We did learn some things in SDI; per the quote from O’Dean Judd’s wall (the Chief Scientist) “If it involves a laser it won’t work” (ABL spent billions for a system that the SECDEF cancelled as a ‘white elephant’) and “If it involves a plasma it certainly won’t work” (Railguns draw a plasma across the rails and projectile, erosion and launch survivable guided projectiles are decades of research away). We learned those Buck Rodgers solutions don’t save us.

tachyonzero

If its doesn’t work build more nukes

David Mliev

I have heard, that Chinese leader Xi Jinpin is so concerned about
American anti-missile plans in Asia (I mean the elements of the system
in Japan and S. Korea), that he wants to discuss this problem soon with
the Russian president to carry out the unified approach to counteract
Americans in the region.

China Lee

It’s very easy to incapacitate a missile defense system.

Firstly, a megaton-class EMP will blind all of the sensors on the ground.

Secondly, look at the illustration of the flight path on an incoming Mach 23 ICBM. Simply destroy the fixed X-band radar and upgraded early warning radars. Without radar sensors, any missile defense system has become inoperable.

In conclusion, missile defense is not viable. It is not possible to create a missile defense for all of the necessary X-band radars and early warning radars. The problem is recursive. Any defense of a X-band radar requires another X-band radar halfway to the launch site. This new X-band radar is itself vulnerable to attack. Thus, the attacker always has the advantage.

http://www.plbg.at/ Franz Plochberger

That’s an old idea: delete missiles by anti-missiles – as I know we thought about this first time in the 80th of last century.

Now its a problem of time-management and organisation of a good payed project. For an external viewer it seems to be a problem of hierachically dividing of money – not of finding best ideas.

As Zunalter later on recommends – Laser should be developed more and more. The only problem is that of clouds…

…or good positioned electromagnetic sensors may also be possible – they have no optical borders…..

…or the starting energy of a missile should be recognised in any way very soon: by permanent contol, by motion detectors around the starting area or by immediate start of a anti-missile if a certain picture (of the missile) appears….

…last not least there should be more than one motion-control-points to give the right signal in the shortest possible time….

…. ethically that method is OK because the sender of a dangerous weapon can be punished by a selfcreated demage!

Bonanzadrvr

I think the Navy shot down a falling satellite with a Standard Missile II off a Aegis Cruiser a few years back. We saw what Patriot Missiles did to SCUD missiles in Desert Storm over twenty years ago. Now, Israel’s Iron Dome can intercept multiple rockets simultaneously…No, it’ll never happen…I’d be willing to bet that Ronnie Ray-gun’s Star Wars that the Soviet Enablers (democrats) said would never work, now exist in space. Killing warheads in the orbital phase is one-part of Star Wars…

cowboybob

It is a jobs program for Republicans. The corporations that get the contracts know to put the jobs in certain states and Congressional districts and to make the appropriate political contributions. Remember, when the Congressman retires, he gets to appropriate his PAC for his personal use. The political contributions are deferred bribes for the Congressman, when he retires.

Anthony Evans

lol the writer of this article is a dumbass.

Dan D

Of course it doesn’t work. Everybody knows that. The money just goes into the coffers of well connected defense contractors. Everyone benefits.

Warren

The conclusions herein may have some degree of accuracy; however the basis thereof are rudimentary at best. The author(s) are not very wise.

Warren

SMH! Countermeasures in connection with ICBMs are not THAT simple.

newborn

why not intercept icbms with emps?

august. brent

I read i n another recent place that America thinks Russia has 1600 nuclear missles aimed at America. Yes they do! But why does nobody mention the other 2900 worldwide? I cannot go into detail, but there is a thing basically called a response time differential. Russia is # minutes earlier than America. This has to do with arming and launch detection etc. When a missle in America is armed, within # minutes, 3 missles are lauched in a triangle, each point 300 miles from the other. America will destroy its own country. How many decoy missles does America have? Probably none. This means, that if Russia send a decoy missle to wasington, that does nothing more than light up the sky and say Happy Birthday, Ameri ca will retaliate and fire a real missle. Then the 1st attack was from America in they eyes of the world. Everyone know Russia is the most powerful. Ameri a has good planes, but the soldiers are about the worst in the world according to Canadians, British, Russia, Australia, France and many more. They cannot fight. They need to call home on their cell phones and cry. Lost in Vietnam and other places. Germany and Japan once thought they could win the world, now it is America. Will they never learn Lord? Russia sits and waits. America will divide, spread to thin and bury itself very fast.

Captain Piccard

You said in your article,

“The problem is, this is a missile system has never been tested against an intercontinental
ballistic missile (the major type of threat it’s supposed to defend against) and has only demonstrated, in the words of the Pentagon’s Director Operational Test and Evaluation report, “a limited capability against a simple threat.””

Despite the fact that I found youtube video of one of our intercept missiles intercepting an intercontinental ballistic missile in a test intercept. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW-WROYdTP8 They hit each other in basically outer space, fascinating but sickening.

Matthew24

Missile defense systems DO work and only failures at life think otherwise. Regarding the current operations, that sounds more like “job justification” operations by civilian contractors who are not focused on solving the problems any more than a cancer researcher would be. There’s more money in NOT solving most problems than in fixing them.

cedrikt2015

Sounds legit.
Deception at it’s best, pretending that the anti-missile defense doesn’t work In order to fool the enemies.
North-Korea, talk is cheap, just try an see what happens if you launch your nukes.

cedrikt2015

China and Russia, there are 2 options that could be the TRUTH. Either USA is very stupid to spend even more money on a project that is a huge failure or USA is extremely smart. Speculations is always fun. :)
If I were you, I wouldn’t gamble on your chances though.

http://adamfoerster.com/ Adam Foerster

The russians figured out how to intercept ICBM long time ago. The answer: use another nuclear missile. This way you can miss the incoming ICMB by 5 miles and still destroy it.

Robert Strong

Put lasers into space, they will work

ExtremeTech Newsletter

Subscribe Today to get the latest ExtremeTech news delivered right to your inbox.

Use of this site is governed by our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Copyright 1996-2016 Ziff Davis, LLC.PCMag Digital Group All Rights Reserved. ExtremeTech is a registered trademark of Ziff Davis, LLC. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis, LLC. is prohibited.